INTRODUCTION


Let me say that I hope I have not betrayed any confidences in these
sketches.

Public men must expect criticism, and no criticism is so good for them,
and therefore for the State, as criticism of character; but their
position is difficult, and they may justly complain when those to whom
they have spoken in the candour of private conversation make use of such
confidences for a public purpose.

If here and there I have in any degree approached this offence, let me
urge two excuses. First, inspired by a pure purpose I might very easily
have said far more than I have said: and, second, my purpose is neither
to grind my own axe (as witness my anonymity) nor to inflict personal
pain (as witness my effort to be just in all cases), but truly to raise
the tone of our public life.

It is the conviction that the tone of our public life is low, and that
this low tone is reacting disastrously in many directions, which has set
me about these studies in political personality.

There is too much dust on the mirrors of Downing Street for our public
men to see themselves as others see them. Some of that dust is from the
war; some of it is the old-fashioned political dust intended for the
eyes of the public; but I think that the worst of all hindrances to true
vision is breathed on the mirrors by those self-regarding public men in
whom principle is crumbling and moral earnestness is beginning to
moulder. One would wipe away those smears.